Frequencies greater than or equal to 22 kHz are inaudible

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Frequencies greater than or equal to 22 kHz are inaudible to the human ear. Is frequency F audible to the human ear?

Frequency G is 16 kHz.
Frequency F is three kHz higher than Frequency G.

Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked

Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked

Both statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are sufficient to answer the question asked; but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient

EACH statement ALONE is sufficient to answer the question asked

Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient to answer the question asked, and additional data specific to the problem are needed


how e ?

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by hemant_rajput » Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:18 am
answer should be c.

using one we know G = 16
using second we know F = G + 3 ==> F = 19. so yes it is audible to human ear.
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by Tommy Wallach » Fri Jan 25, 2013 12:56 pm
Hey Guys,

This might be super annoying, but there's a logical defense for answer choice E.

If we jump to putting the two pieces of information together, we know that Frequency F is 19 kHz.

Now let's look at the question stem. We know that any frequency greater than or equal to 22 kKz is inaudible to the human ear. What we don't know is if they become audible BELOW 19 kHz.

These two statements don't contradict:

1) Frequencies greater than or equal to 22 kHz are inaudible to the human ear.

2) Frequencies greater than or equal to 15 kHz are inaudible to the human ear.

See the problem. F could be audible or inaudible!

Here's another example:

Anybody who weighs more than 200 pounds is obese. Is Steve obese?

1) Steve weighs 195 pounds.

At first glance, it looks like Steve is under the limit. But 200 pounds was not actually set as the lowest possible limit for obesity. The statement simply told us that anyone over 200 pounds is obese. So Steve could ALSO be obese!

Let me know if that helps!

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by bpolley00 » Fri Jan 25, 2013 5:04 pm
Tommy,

How often does this type of question come up during the exam? Where it is almost written to purposely trick the reader? This reminds me almost of Fraternity Hazing. Isn't the whole point of this exam not to trick people, but rather provide a standardized way of evaluating individual candidates based on their ability to logically study for and complete a test on a standardized playing field? I just don't think any amount of studying would allow me to catch this type of question or, if I did, it would probably be pretty lucky and quite astute of me.

I mean if I told you in the real world, for example,all crayons larger than 1 inch come in assorted colors. One wouldn't walk around thinking, ahh but there is no way to tell what color crayons <1 inch come in!! That man must of meant that they aren't in assorted colors! AHA! BRILLIANT. You would also realize that this adds little value to that person's life/ overall well being having the ability to answer that question.

I guess as I begin to understand the test more thoroughly and begin to achieve a higher score thanks to the good people on this forum, I tend to think that this is merely a barrier of entry to keep people out rather than let people in. I mean if it wasn't for the experts on this forum, Thursdays with Ron, and Manhattan's production of their books, I don't believe anyone could possibly study for this test simply with the OG and get a 700 - let alone a non-English speaking student from a foreign country. I am not sure how long the GMAT has been around; however, before the internet was invented, this test would be nearly impossible to ace. I am sure someone has done it, but I hope you understand where I am coming from. Not to mention, the extensive amount of time it takes to study for; which, if it wasn't for my families socioeconomic status and my position as a single man probably wouldn't have even been feasible.

I guess my previous experience at a business school led me to the belief that you shouldn't just take theories, things people put in front of you, or ideas that "experts" teach/ spout as being intellectually honest. Let me be clear here, the "experts" is not a jab at the Gmat Instructor's but at some teachers I have had in the past. For example, one had received a 720 on the GMAT in China; however, they had figured out how to cheat the test by having hundreds of people take it at the beginning of the month, record their questions, and give them to other students who were taking the test at the end of the month. This only works because, I believe, the GMAT cycles their question bank every month. Anyways, my hope with this test was that it would be a more equitable approach to evaluate individuals than merely looking at GPA and would ;thus, if I do well, give me an opportunity to study under individuals who are intellectually honest, hold people academically accountable and have a more thorough understanding of the subject they are teaching rather than merely spouting PowerPoint talking points they got from a book. An individual doesn't have to critically think too hard to figure out that Teachers have incentives for hiding the truth, testing for superficial understanding rather than the ability to allocate the information, inflating grades and allowing special circumstances for certain individuals to artificially and superficially increase their GPA.

Perhaps I am misguided and should just shut up and complete the test. However, when I see questions such as the one above, I can't help but have a diminished point of view toward the test. I also have this sense after looking at Ron's post simply asking the creators of this test to specify what the highest score achievable in each section was, which they couldn't give a strait answer too. I mean, I find this quite precarious. Let me know what your thoughts are on this and perhaps make an argument to nudge me intellectually to your point of view. I mean I could be completely off base here, who knows. Anyways, Think of it as an exercise in critical thinking or An Analytical Writing Assessment. :)

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by Tommy Wallach » Fri Jan 25, 2013 5:41 pm
Hey BPolley,

I understand your annoyance BUT you are actually misunderstanding the point of the GMAT. It is VERY PURPOSELY a test of trickery, not of knowledge. Keep in mind, this stuff is important. In fact, the example you gave was wrong.

If someone says, "Every division with more than 50 employees underperformed this year," does that mean "Every division with less than 50 employees performed well this year"? Nope! Of course not.

But even if you don't buy my example there, the GMAT is very much a test of trickery and what is known (in the business) as lateral thinking. So believe me when I say that a question like this, while annoying, fits very much into the annoying wheelhouse of GMAT-ness. That being said, I don't think I've ever seen this trick before. I'm going to ask Ron to weigh in on the annoying-ness. Ron?

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by bpolley00 » Fri Jan 25, 2013 6:11 pm
Tommy,

I can see where you are coming from. I think not being fooled is vitally important in business. Although I still think my crayon example is quite applicable; however, may have missed the point. :) I am looking forward to hearing Ron's response. Also, I will be sure to post some DS questions that I had issues with here soon. I would love to hear a response on some of them and then be able to go back to the drawing board.

Thanks again for your thoughts Tommy

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by lunarpower » Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:14 pm
bpolley, i think you have a valid complaint about this problem, though perhaps not when it comes to the rather sweeping generalities you made in the rest of your post.

here's my basic opinion on this problem:
i don't think a problem exactly like this one would show up on the test (this one isn't official, i'm pretty sure), because too many people's knee-jerk intuition would be along the lines of yours -- i.e., they would reasonably expect the spectrum of audible frequencies to be a continuous interval. i.e., there's not going to be an interval of frequencies in which some are audible but others, interspersed at random in the same interval, aren't.
still, the problem can at least give you good practice in calibrating your intuition for these kinds of things.
bpolley00 wrote:This reminds me almost of Fraternity Hazing.
sounds like you were in an ... interesting fraternity.
Isn't the whole point of this exam not to trick people, but rather provide a standardized way of evaluating individual candidates based on their ability to logically study for and complete a test on a standardized playing field?
actually, one thing i've consistently noticed, and appreciated, about this exam is the nearly complete lack of anything that could honestly be called "trickery" (as opposed to "problems requiring due diligence" -- a thin line at times, but still a discernible line).
in fact, even on problems that do seem to admit a "trick" interpretation, that interpretation isn't the official one. as an example, on data sufficiency #70 in the OG 12th edition, if you are an overly technically-minded reader, there's nothing to stop "n" from being 0 (the trick interpretation). however, the official solution ignores that "possibility", in accordance with common sense.

in general, you should feel pretty good about this situation, because the test items must pass the "experimental" stage before they become official test items that count. in other words, as "tricky" as some individuals might find them, they still have to pass the wisdom-of-the-crowd test before they play any role in anyone's admission to business school.
I just don't think any amount of studying would allow me to catch this type of question or, if I did, it would probably be pretty lucky and quite astute of me.
if it's true that no amount of studying would help you to catch this sort of thing, then, to be perhaps overly frank, you need to learn to study differently!
specifically, if that's the case, then your studying is probably too focused on the objective material itself, and not focused enough on what bugs bunny might call "strategery".
I mean if I told you in the real world, for example,all crayons larger than 1 inch come in assorted colors. One wouldn't walk around thinking, ahh but there is no way to tell what color crayons <1 inch come in!!
i don't mean to rain on your parade here, but that is precisely what i would think.
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by lunarpower » Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:15 pm
I guess as I begin to understand the test more thoroughly and begin to achieve a higher score thanks to the good people on this forum, I tend to think that this is merely a barrier of entry to keep people out rather than let people in.
there's some truth to that, sure. but, then again, of course there is! admissions to top bschools are hyper-competitive, so something has to be an objective criterion that lets them winnow down the masses a bit.
it's like when you apply for a really competitive job. eventually they get to the interview stage where they actually get to know people -- but, before that, they might automatically throw out all of the resumes with typos, or all of the applications from people who didn't go to college, or anything else with a sweeping criterion that would inevitably strike at least some people as unfair. it is what it is.
I mean if it wasn't for the experts on this forum, Thursdays with Ron, and Manhattan's production of their books, I don't believe anyone could possibly study for this test simply with the OG and get a 700 - let alone a non-English speaking student from a foreign country.
i know the main point of this comment wasn't to serve as an endorsement... but thanks for the endorsement!
Not to mention, the extensive amount of time it takes to study for; which, if it wasn't for my families socioeconomic status and my position as a single man probably wouldn't have even been feasible.


what's interesting here is that the gmat is, by design, a test that actually doesn't require a ridiculous amount of studying. remember that there are only two kinds of objective knowledge actually required on this exam:
1/ mathematical knowledge from high school and earlier
2/ an understanding of the basic structure of the english language, along with universal linguistic principles like parallelism and so on
other than that, there's nothing else you have to know going into this test. the rest of it consists of familiarizing yourself with the way the problems work -- most notably with how they differ from "academic" exercises -- but, if you see this exam is something that requires endless hundreds of hours of preparation (or as something requiring you to memorize anything, beyond relatively basic mathematical facts), then you aren't thinking about it in the right way.
I guess my previous experience at a business school led me to the belief that you shouldn't just take theories, things people put in front of you, or ideas that "experts" teach/ spout as being intellectually honest.
wait, do you already have an mba?

Let me be clear here, the "experts" is not a jab at the Gmat Instructor's but at some teachers I have had in the past. For example, one had received a 720 on the GMAT in China; however, they had figured out how to cheat the test by having hundreds of people take it at the beginning of the month, record their questions, and give them to other students who were taking the test at the end of the month.
if you know the people involved in this, then, depending on exactly how your ethics work, you may have some sort of ethical duty (and that's not even mentioning the competitive motivation) to report it to gmac/pearson.
Perhaps I am misguided and should just shut up and complete the test. However, when I see questions such as the one above, I can't help but have a diminished point of view toward the test.
well, you should do your best to stick with reliable sources of problems. if you find unsourced material on the internet for free, well, in a lot of cases it's worth exactly what you paid for it.
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by hemant_rajput » Sat Jan 26, 2013 1:43 am
Well I think it is a valid problem. It is something what we called "Loop Hole" in software industry". It is a hidden agenda which most of the people will overlook. Anyway, a great question indeed.
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by bpolley00 » Sun Jan 27, 2013 8:55 pm
Ron,

My apologies on it taking so long to get back to you on this. I actually typed up quite a clever, long response; however, my browser crashed right before I could click submit. I am just going to go down your responses and numerically put in my general thoughts. As always, perhaps I am misguided with some of my responses, but it is just what I am thinking at the moment. I don't really filter myself.
1) In regards to the fraternity hazing comment, I was using it as a metaphor for trickery. Aka. based on my prior experiences, my background etc. I tend to think if I can't figure something out that something is either A) disingenuously being presented (For example, if you take a test and a question is asking whether Johnny is confident or presumptuous I would say that is a disingenuous question as those two words are synonyms; thus, the test isn't checking for a vast understanding of the material but rather tricking the test taker. I would probably assume the professor threw it in there because he has been teaching for 20+ years and he has figured out how to make the ole bell curve of the class look a certain way so he doesn't have to do anything and can just focus on research) or B) I do not have enough information to correctly figure it out. I mean, in college I would slam entire Finance books the night before the test because I thought it was funny and get an A if I wanted. However, I didn't really care about my GPA because it isn't as if it really means anything. I can go into more detail here if you'd like, but I am pretty sure you already know why GPA is an odd measure of a person's mental ability.

2) A Thin line indeed. When I see the above problem I tend to think that it is almost intended to fool someone rather than to test ability. But, I guess that is just my opinion. I mean I already know I am good at business, so I guess my perspective is quite the opposite from most candidates. Rather than appeasing admissions, I figure if I do well on this test they are either going to let me in or someone else will, as it isn't as if the schools aren't trying to compete with one another for the best students. That isn't to say I don't want to go to certain schools, but I guess I have never really been affected from other people's subjective opinion's of me. I guess I am sort of a utilitarian. :) And I don't care about money because I have an understanding of how Monetary policy works, which is kind of sad to be honest. That is another topic for another day though.

3) Point taken in regards to Mr. Bugs Bunny

4) Well Ron, that is why you got into Stanford and are in the top 1% of people who take the GMAT I guess. :) That strikes me as quite an odd way of looking at the crayons, but I guess that goes back to another GMAT expert's advice in a previous thread who told me good luck bending the spoon.

5) See, here is where I differ from most people on the hyper competitiveness. If you are merely doing things to get into grad school, given that you know what admissions is looking for and this game has been played out for years, isn't that kind of disingenuous? I think the ability, especially in business, to be objective and know when to look at something and say, well it will be there tomorrow, today I don't have to do a d*mn thing may be advantageous. I think a historical look at Berkshire Hathaway's investment record will indicate whether or not hyper competitiveness is a good thing in Business. In fact, if you ever get a chance to take a look at their record, it isn't hyper activity that wins but rather coming up with one maybe two good ideas a year. It's like baseball with no outs. You swing when the pitcher lobs it down the middle, not desperately at all the 90 mph curve-balls trying to impress your buddies in the dugout. Ask George Soros or any of the other people who just couldn't stop themselves from investing in internet companies in the 90's how it worked out. I mean some of those businesses were never ever going to make a profit *COUGH* Etoys *COUGH*. For a present day example, you could take a look at purchasing Linkedin, which is selling at 800 times it's earnings. Anyways, If you don't believe me, try to day trade and let me know how it works out for you :). I think another example of hypercompetitiveness, most recently, would be the obvious case of Lance Armstrong. My guess is regardless of his GPA or GMAT Score if he would have applied to go to grad school at Harvard (assuming he has an undergraduate degree) or somewhere equivalent he probably would have been accepted. Something to think about.

6) I don't have a problem with endorsing people who are intellectually honest and actually take the time out of their day to provide a service to the general public at no cost. You certainly don't have too. Like I have said in my other posts, it is much appreciated and if I had the capital right now to pay for a class or a session I certainly would.

7) Maybe, I didn't study the most efficient way to begin with and it took time to acclimate myself with the way the test works.

8) Do I already have an MBA? No; however, I guess I will explain myself and elaborate on my background. I have a double major in Finance and Economics and the majority of my upper level classes were double listed as MBA classes. AKA, there were MBA students in the same classes who were getting MBA credit and merely writing one additional extra paper. Quite an interesting way of doing MBA classes in my opinion. I also won my stock market game by purchasing AIG at $2 a share before the government bailed the company out and managed a portfolio for the University in my later classes which I also did quite well at. This isn't because of insider information as you may assume, this was my decision sitting in the library. I only want to get an MBA because I want to expand my circle of competence, to be surrounded by like minded people and to increase my disposable income so I can invest with more capital. I enjoy the process more than the proceeds; however, if you don't have any disposable income then you can't even play the game. I also need to know I am not missing anything, and to be educated by people who have more experience and are better than me; thus, why I need to score a 700+. Minimizing errors over the long-run is extremely valuable. Like the GMAT, investing is about being able to eliminate obvious wrong answers and then find the ideal answer.

9) This happened years ago and again I am not really hyper competitive. He is the one who has to live with the fact he is a phony. Good luck carrying that on your shoulders for the rest of your life. That all your success is based off cheating. Sounds pretty pathetic to me, but people do it all the time, that is their choice. Also, I have no way of proving it.

10) I have generally stuck to, as I have said, Manhattan and OG's stuff. Along with your videos because I know they are truthful.

Thanks again for the advice/ comments. It really is appreciated. Also, My apologies if there are grammatical errors in this post. I am tired and just got done studying for 4 hours :).

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by lunarpower » Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:03 am
hi,
so this thread is probably getting off-topic at this point, but it's interesting (at least to me).
bpolley00 wrote:based on my prior experiences, my background etc. I tend to think if I can't figure something out that something is either A) disingenuously being presented (For example, if you take a test and a question is asking whether Johnny is confident or presumptuous I would say that is a disingenuous question as those two words are synonyms;
ok, i get what you're saying here, although that's not the best example (those words differ substantially, especially in their connotations -- which are exactly opposite -- but also in the nuances of their meaning).
thus, the test isn't checking for a vast understanding of the material but rather tricking the test taker. I would probably assume the professor threw it in there because he has been teaching for 20+ years and he has figured out how to make the ole bell curve of the class look a certain way so he doesn't have to do anything and can just focus on research)
right. but, on standardized tests, it's different.
on all major standardized tests, every scored item has to pass an "experimental" stage, in which it's tried out (without counting toward the score) on thousands of actual test takers.
if an item were indeed "disingenuous" or "tricky" -- as opposed to just requiring an extra degree of careful thinking or due diligence -- then it would be thrown out. a genuine "trick question", after all, would nail both high and low scorers, and thus would be out of step with the progression of test takers' performance.

the flipside here is, of course, that a "trick" that lines up perfectly with test takers' scores -- i.e., a "trick" that the highest scorers somehow always catch (or at least catch far more often), but that the lower scorers don't -- is, well, not a trick at all. that's a tough pill to swallow for people who don't get those particular items correct, but it is what it is.
or B) I do not have enough information to correctly figure it out. I mean, in college I would slam entire Finance books the night before the test because I thought it was funny and get an A if I wanted.
well, it's good that you could do this and make it work; that means you have a rather deep well of talent, at least in the kind of material tested in those finance classes.
but, those (and just about all other college classes) are fundamentally different from the gmat.
college exams are meant to test material that's based heavily on knowledge -- you have to know stuff. sometimes there are applications, but, in most cases, they're still applications of stuff that you have to learn.

the gmat is something altogether different. from top to bottom, it's designed to (a) minimize the amount of knowledge required to do well on it, and (b) make sure that, if any knowledge is required, it's stuff that everyone has reasonably seen. (this is why the exam doesn't require knowledge beyond high-school math and the fundaments of the written english language -- because every applicant has definitely been exposed to those.)
instead, it's a reasoning test. as such, yes, it will expose you to tests of due diligence / "being careful".
However, I didn't really care about my GPA because it isn't as if it really means anything. I can go into more detail here if you'd like, but I am pretty sure you already know why GPA is an odd measure of a person's mental ability.
as you and i are surely both aware, GPA is not completely meaningless.
its interpretation is going to change depending on a student's major, of course -- a high GPA in mathematics, for instance, doesn't mean the same thing as a high GPA in communications or humanities -- but it certainly means something.

in some majors, a high GPA may indicate little more than that a student is good at getting things done on time, or even that he/she is good at understanding what her professors want to see on exams and the like. but, even if so, why aren't those, too, valuable qualities? if someone is going into marketing, for example, then the complaint that GPA just measures "appeal to professors" becomes, well, no longer a complaint. instead, it means someone is awfully good at "marketing", at least in that particular sense.

2) A Thin line indeed. When I see the above problem I tend to think that it is almost intended to fool someone rather than to test ability. But, I guess that is just my opinion.
this is why "experimental" questions exist: precisely so that these things are NOT just matters of opinion.

4) Well Ron, that is why you got into Stanford and are in the top 1% of people who take the GMAT I guess. :) That strikes me as quite an odd way of looking at the crayons, but I guess that goes back to another GMAT expert's advice in a previous thread who told me good luck bending the spoon.
it's not, really. or at least it depends on context.

i can give you another example: i wear a size 15-16 shoe. i called an allen edmonds store the other day to inquire about a particular model, and was told that sizes 15+ only come in widths D and E.
would i then assume anything about the smaller sizes? of course i wouldn't -- they might only come in those widths, or they might come in lots of other widths (which they in fact do). anything at all could be true about the smaller sizes.
same for the crayons.
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by lunarpower » Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:17 am
5) See, here is where I differ from most people on the hyper competitiveness. If you are merely doing things to get into grad school, given that you know what admissions is looking for and this game has been played out for years, isn't that kind of disingenuous?
slippery slope there my man; you could make the same argument about anything that requires any effort whatsoever.

i.e., my wife and i both "know what we're looking for" in terms of physical looks -- and the human attraction game has been played for a lot longer than the b-school game -- but we're certainly not going to stop working out because it's "disingenuous".

also, i think that what you're deriding here as "hypercompetitiveness" is, in part, the reason why the USA is currently the world's only true superpower, and why the epicenter of just about every significant industry in the world is located in this country.
like it or not, america is all about more! better! faster! stronger! new new new!, and nowhere is that going to be more true than in the business world. i'm more of a type-B person myself, but, hey, it's the american dream.
I think the ability, especially in business, to be objective and know when to look at something and say, well it will be there tomorrow, today I don't have to do a d*mn thing may be advantageous. I think a historical look at Berkshire Hathaway's investment record will indicate whether or not hyper competitiveness is a good thing in Business. In fact, if you ever get a chance to take a look at their record, it isn't hyper activity that wins but rather coming up with one maybe two good ideas a year. It's like baseball with no outs. You swing when the pitcher lobs it down the middle, not desperately at all the 90 mph curve-balls trying to impress your buddies in the dugout. Ask George Soros or any of the other people who just couldn't stop themselves from investing in internet companies in the 90's how it worked out. I mean some of those businesses were never ever going to make a profit *COUGH* Etoys *COUGH*. For a present day example, you could take a look at purchasing Linkedin, which is selling at 800 times it's earnings. Anyways, If you don't believe me, try to day trade and let me know how it works out for you :). I think another example of hypercompetitiveness, most recently, would be the obvious case of Lance Armstrong. My guess is regardless of his GPA or GMAT Score if he would have applied to go to grad school at Harvard (assuming he has an undergraduate degree) or somewhere equivalent he probably would have been accepted. Something to think about.
well, fine, but this is the beauty of the business world: there's room for both relatively lazy, but brilliant, "visionaries" and harder-working, though perhaps less creative, "grinds" to succeed.
the examples here are duly noted (except the last one; i can't really tell what point you are trying to make about lance armstrong).

for every businessperson who waits for the lob down the middle, there's another one who frantically chases all the pitches (like, say, manoj bhargava of 5-hour energy).
I enjoy the process more than the proceeds
i think this is (perhaps ironically) what makes the proceeds come in the first place. so, sounds good.

i mean, bill gates still gets up and goes to work every day, too. he certainly doesn't have to.

9) This happened years ago and again I am not really hyper competitive. He is the one who has to live with the fact he is a phony. Good luck carrying that on your shoulders for the rest of your life. That all your success is based off cheating. Sounds pretty pathetic to me, but people do it all the time, that is their choice. Also, I have no way of proving it.
well, i would assume it wouldn't weigh particularly heavily on his ethics. lots of people are purely utilitarian (in some respects, at least), and others might not have qualms because they think the admissions process itself is inherently unfair/unethical. this dude is probably one or the other.

from what i've seen with my former students, the admissions process of B-schools is largely more balanced, ethical, and well-considered than that of most other schools. it's not without its issues, of course, but it's an honest enough process that i agree with what you're saying here.

My apologies if there are grammatical errors in this post. I am tired and just got done studying for 4 hours :).

-BP
my posts are not always sterling, either.

beware of studying for that long, and definitely don't study any longer at a stretch. the adult human capacity for learning (as contrasted with doing things, like taking practice tests) generally runs out by about that length of time, and isn't restored until you sleep.
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by varun289 » Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:21 am
hi ron

i saw many problems , where FACT TWO stated purposly

u have to consider fact one + two ,

and if u ignore fact two u will get punished in answer

so this was typical question where one has to consider

INVISIBLE fact i.e Audibility so answer is E

i will get back source of this question - i think its veritas prep
will confirm later

but YES

GMAT do test such SILY MISTAKES chances.

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by lunarpower » Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:31 am
varun289 wrote:hi ron

i saw many problems , where FACT TWO stated purposly

u have to consider fact one + two ,

and if u ignore fact two u will get punished in answer

so this was typical question where one has to consider

INVISIBLE fact i.e Audibility so answer is E

i will get back source of this question - i think its veritas prep
will confirm later

but YES

GMAT do test such SILY MISTAKES chances.
it seems we're actually on the same page here.
as i stated above (in this post), "the problem can at least give you good practice in calibrating your intuition for these kinds of things."

again, i would suspect that this particular problem would not pass muster on an official exam. but, a similar problem with somewhat different subject material? sure. so, this one will at least serve to sharpen your wits.
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by bpolley00 » Fri Feb 01, 2013 11:21 am
Ron,

This thread is definately off topic, but as you said, I find it interesting as well.

1) I know I couldn't find a perfect synonym for confident, but atleast you got what I was trying to say. Assured? I went through the synonym's on webster to make sure they were accurate, but they were all kind of, meh.

2) How is that judged on this test? I mean, where do the test makers draw the line on an 800 level question and purposeful disingenuousness?

3) Agreed; however, I would say some of that "stuff" isn't worth knowing. The last time I used Beta to distinguish the riskiness of a stock was, well , never. Another Finance jab for fun :).

4) You are right GPA means different things to different people. However, if I know the material that they are teaching is not Factual, don't you think you would get pretty disinterested in reading things on things you know are fiction? Unless of course, you are a huge Harry Potter fan. Not only that, if the teachers scale the class considerably on every test to cator to the bell curve, don't you think that is almost a disincentive to the people in the class who actually understand the material? I can give you a more marginal example to provide some more obvious evidence; however, I think you understand, in general, what I am saying here. This is why I primarily focused on beating the S&P500, as that is a universal indicator of success in investment management. Which, leads me to what I want to further study, Value investing!

5) I have nothing to add to experimental questions. However, one thing I was thinking about is, what if the individuals who have scored a 700+ who are writing these have had some piece of information other test takers didn't have? Perhaps instruction from other top teachers, that maybe, Lu from a small Chinese province cannot get? As, I can tell you right now if you just studied the OG and that was it, I would have serious doubt of being able to score a 700+. However, maybe I am wrong :).

6) Yeah, but as you said - Context with shoes would be a logical assumption as those are commonly different in size and width. Crayons aren't. If you asked the crayon question and you thought about it like that it would be the equivalent of using of anything that comes in a standardized size. It seems to me like this almost a philosophy question, like asking yourself if you can prove that the sun is going to rise tomorrow :) or that we aren't all just brains in a vat. I know I am not, but I can't prove it. Anyways .....

7) Perhaps our difference in opinion on this comes from the type of business venture we are trying to be successful at. Perhaps, a hyper competitivness is appropriate in inventing a new computer or making your company that produces socks more competitive. Absolutely! However, hypercompetitiveness in allocating capital will destroy your returns. As I said, go become a day trader for a year and come back and talk to me. If you are a millionaire I will shut up :).

8) I think Lance Armstrong is a good example where a hardcore drive to win will ruin you. In regards to Manoj, that is fine. I like taking my time. I only swing when I am about 99% sure I will hit it out of the park. But, when I swing, I am willing to put everything I have behind it. Charlie Munger has a good quote on this it goes something to the tune of - In order to be succesful in business takes years of patience and when the timing is right and you grasp the obvious you must be willing to bet on your conclusions heavily. In my case, I predicted optimal monetary policy given the situation in 2008. It was obvious. It isn't as if the policy makers aren't under constraints in forming their views and how to best act on them........

9) I couldn't agree more. The hungry don't get fed.

10) Do you have any good books on this? I just bought the brain that changes itself; however, I would like to know the limits of learning so I could study more efficiently. While craming books in a night is fun, it certainly isn't optimal. Although, I feel like my short-term memory is ridiculous because of it.

Always a fun conversation, even if it doesn't have to do with the Gmat. Another reason I want to go to school, I want to be surrounded by intellctually competent people who can compete with me :). Watch me fail this test and everyone on here laugh at me after talking like this. hahaha

- BP